Google Maps 1.1 for iPhone Not Well Received

Early last month, Google released a 1.1 upgrade to their iPhone mapping product that was faster, integrated Google contacts and included more countries. Apparently though the upgrade has not gone over well with users as the bad reviews seem to be flowing into the App store at a significant clip.

Since its release 5 weeks ago there have been 1,179 reviews of which a great many were negative. The initial release was greeted with instant savior status and 10’s of thousands of positive reviews. Complaints about the new version included high levels of data usage, increased difficulty of use, screen dimming issues, directions failures and usability problems.

There is more than a little irony in this. I suppose that there is some possibility of a review smear campaign, although that seems unlikely, it does point out how hard mapping is. Even when you are Google.

Please consider leaving a comment as your input will help me (& everyone else) better understand and learn about local.

5 thoughts on “Google Maps 1.1 for iPhone Not Well Received”

Who knows if reviews are fake or real anymore, eh? Mentioning a “review smear campaign” is interesting, as many of these negative reviews seem to be quite expertly written (from what I read in your screenshot.) Though I’ll have to rely on Occam’s razor to assume many users are just unhappy with the latest version.